Number Theory: What does data tell us about China’s declining population?

The National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) on Wednesday announced that the country’s population fell for the second year in a row in 2023 to reach 1,409.7 million (or 1.41 billion) This is a decline of 2.08 million compared to 2022. If projections made by the UN in 2022 are believed, the country is also likely to have lost its title as the “most populous country” to India during the course of the year. Although China has seen two consecutive years of population decline before, in 1960 and 1961, data suggests that unlike then, the decline this time around is due to larger demographic trends. The charts below explain these trends and what they mean for the country in detail.